Classical genetic engineering with recombinant DNA is a powerful and widespread technology that enables scientists to redesign life forms by modifying or extending their DNA. Advances in this field allow us to gain insight into the operational principles that govern living organisms. This insight can be applied to a variety of fields, for example human therapeutics, synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs and other products, molecular fabrication of biomaterials, crops and livestock engineering, and toxin detection with biological sentinels (Weiss et al., 2002, Natural Computing, Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 1-40).
A newly emerging field of synthetic genetics studies the theoretical and experimental design of simple synthetic genetic circuits to aid in elucidating the operating principles of more complex genetic regulatory networks in living cells. This type of genetic and biological engineering will have a great impact in controlling cellular behaviors for biotechnology and human therapeutics. Unfortunately, biology is such that it is difficult to predict the precise behavior of even the simplest synthetic network. Currently, directed evolution has been applied to the creation of synthetic genetic circuits (Yokobayashi et al., 2002, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99:16587-91) by random mutagenesis, however the process is time consuming and requires multiple rounds of mutagenesis and selection of plasmid colonies for desired mutants. Weiss 2002 also described several methods for building genetic circuits. The BioBricks Foundation is an organization founded by engineers and scientists from MIT, Harvard, and UCSF where scientists development the use of technologies based on BioBricks, which are standard DNA parts that encode basic biological functions. Using BioBricks, a synthetic biologist or biological engineer can, to some extent, program living organisms in the same way a computer scientist can program a computer. However, tools are needed to apply this technology and make it more available.
Therefore, what are needed are foundational technologies that make engineering biology routine and advance the field of biological engineering so that its full potential can be realized, which could lead to significant advances in the medical and pharmaceutical sciences for developing therapies and drugs for human diseases.